Your First RGB Vault

Experience RGB with BitMask by creating an RGB Vault to hold your Assets.

In the world of RGB, understanding the concept of the “Fund Vault” button is crucial. Here, we will explore the reasons behind the need to fund a vault and provide a step-by-step guide on how to do it. By diving into the intricacies of RGB20 and RGB21 assets, UTXOs, and their role in securing and managing your digital assets, we aim to demystify the process and empower you to make informed decisions.

The “assets vault” serves as a separate wallet with distinct addresses for RGB20 and RGB21 assets. This separation helps prevent certain bugs. Currently, we maintain one unspent transaction output (UTXO) for each asset type, although we might add more UTXOs that can be reserved by the BitMask wallet to support swaps.

A single UTXO can anchor over a quarter million different RGB asset contracts, so you only need one per asset. Mixing contract types is not advisable due to past instances of bugs caused by this practice, although it is possible, and we may do it in the future to save users fees. Additionally, using separate UTXOs allows for simultaneous activities since RGB assets color the coins held within a UTXO.

To comprehend RGB and Bitcoin, it is essential to understand the purpose of a UTXO. Essentially, it represents a specific amount of satoshis that, once spent, cannot be spent again. UTXOs can be divided into multiple outputs, often for payments and change (remaining funds sent back to one’s own address). This is how Bitcoin prevents double-spending.

RGB contracts must be anchored to a UTXO in order to modify certain values in the contract, such as asset allocation, if you possess the UTXO, and in the case of RGB20 or RGB21, your wallet can utilize client-side validation to confirm that you have received and are able to spend your assets.

Therefore, the “Fund vault” button essentially provides you with two initial UTXOs to anchor your RGB assets. In BitMask 0.7.0, we provide the transaction ID for the “Fund vault” operation, allowing users to visually track the transaction in a mempool explorer. This process should also be more cost-effective, as we now only create two UTXOs instead of the previous four. Also notice that the change is sent back to your wallet. This is to an internal address that’s counted as part of your wallet balance.

During the course of use, your wallet will generate numerous new addresses as they are used. This is done to protect your privacy, as address reuse is strongly discouraged in the world of Bitcoin wallets. In contrast, Ethereum wallets do not generate new addresses for each use, which can compromise your privacy. With Ethereum, everyone can see all of your transactions, which is considered concerning and goes against the principles of Bitcoin. Therefore, we do not follow that approach.